


The Protégé

by Proteus



Category: Fate: The Winx Saga (TV), Winx Club
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, F/F, F/M, Friends to Enemies, Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Mentor/Protégé, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:33:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29564046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Proteus/pseuds/Proteus
Summary: Pre-Canon. Farah has completed her studies at Alfea, and shown enough promise to become Rosalind's apprentice. Extract below:‘Farah will be apprenticing under Deputy Headmistress Rosalind.’Farah moved to stand next to Andreas, and he shot her a conspiratorial, merry smile.‘Nice robe,’ he mouthed.Farah grinned back, but then her gaze was pulled back to searching the crowd, combing through the faces to look for Rosalind, seeing Ben briefly, but he seemed to be preoccupied by something towards the back of the hall – many people seemed to be, in fact –  but Farah kept looking until she found Rosalind’s face, and smiled at her, somehow both confident and shy, and Rosalind was looking at her too, oddly wry and expectant –
Relationships: Farah Dowling & Rosalind, Farah Dowling & Saul Silva, Farah Dowling/Rosalind
Comments: 16
Kudos: 31





	1. It's Time

Farah adjusted the sleeves of her pale blue robe and let out a breath. She looked at herself skeptically in the mirror. The military cut of the garment didn’t sit well with the colour, she felt grimly, but Alfea was nothing without its traditions, and despite the necessity in recent years for everyone to dress in a state of battle ready preparedness, Rosalind was insistent that she make this capitulation to ceremony. 

She felt lurid, awkward, fluorescent. She almost suspected Princess Luna of weaving some subtly embarrassing light spell into the threads. _Queen Luna now_ , she reminded herself, and that was enough a reminder of what was at stake to stiffen her spine, look calmly into the steady brown eyes of her reflection, and _get a grip_.

_Or grip nothing_ , she reminded herself, as she gently relaxed her muscles, deepened her breath, and simply stood, as she was, for a few moments. She rested her fingertips on her dressing table, before reaching for a dusky mauve lipstick. These were the simple rituals that made sense to her. She became impatient with anything more elaborate than intent and concise action. 

Rituals, she thought as she smoothed the colour onto her lips, were like colouring books. They gave structure to a child’s art; helped them to stay within the lines. _Imagine living your life colouring in someone else’s drawings, pouring your magic into someone else’s ritual. It didn’t come_ , she thought, as she traced the thin curve of her lips in mauve, _from the core_.

She tucked a few flyaway hairs behind her ears, and then on second thoughts, pulled some strands to the front again to frame her face. She exhaled abruptly, irritated with herself. All this primping! _Queen_ Luna must’ve rubbed off on her these last few years together in the suite. _Appearance is everything._ But she was in the students' suite no longer. She lightly touched the ornate ‘A’ pinned to her robe. She was an apprentice now.

Rosalind’s apprentice and protégé. She held her hands close to her heart for a moment. It was an honour beyond what she could have hoped for. And tonight was the night of the declaration ceremony, and also marked the beginning of term with the usual influx of first years, the best and brightest of all the Fairy realms. Though of course, they came no longer from Domino.

Farah’s father was an accomplished Mind Fairy from Domino. He had attended Alfea close to fifty years ago, where he had been paired with Farah’s mother, a Specialist, for training. Farah’s mother came from a noble family in Eraklyon. As happened frequently with Fairies and their Specialists, their attachment soon turned into love, and when they decided to have a child together thirty or so years after they first paired up at Alfea, they settled in Eraklyon, close to a portal into Domino.

That was when portals to Domino were still open, naturally. Before Queen Astra of Solaria decreed that they all be closed, because of the Burned Ones. Since Domino had succumbed to some terrible catastrophe - _equivalent_ , Farah thought, _to nuclear fallout in the First World_ \- there were no more portals to Domino. No more pilgrimages to the Dragon Flame, no more trade of exquisite magic work, and no more family on her father’s side.

Fairies and Specialists aged differently to humans, but it was necessary for them to have access to the ambient, wild magic of their homeland in order to completely stall the aging process. Farah remembered, as a child, sensing tendrils of charged, joyful magic flowing curiously from the Domino portal, almost blowing, reaching familiarly around their tall townhouse, tickling the hairs on her arms, energising her - 

‘That’s a Dragon wind,’ her Dad would say, and he’d lean into it, and tilt Farah’s chin up as if to warm her face in sunlight.   
  
There was no more Dragon wind now. There was no more tall townhouse either. That settlement close to the portal had been one of the first to be overrun with Burned Ones. Her parents had died in her first year at Alfea.

_One of the most wonderful things about mind magic,_ thought Farah, giving her reflection a shrewd look, _is how you can practice it on yourself._

Her eyes flashed mercury. _Calm, clarity, strength._

There was a knock at the door. Farah looked up, poised, focused. ‘Come in,’ she called. 

Rosalind observed her with a faint half smirk, betraying nothing. 

‘It’s time.’


	2. Passageway

Farah closed the door of her private apprentice’s quarters behind her, and followed Rosalind through Alfea. She tried not to trail her like a gosling. She was nineteen now, and had a sense of dignity. She watched Rosalind’s back, mildly wrongfooted by the lack of a bulky jacket. It was elegant, what she was wearing. Like a pale, grey trench coat, but with a Specialist style tan strap across the chest. Farah appreciated the symbolism. It smacked of self sufficiency, and seemed to both quietly undermine the traditional Alfean training system of pairing Fairy and Specialist, and pay homage to it at the same time.

 _Rosalind’s a bit like that_ , Farah thought, determinedly trying not to trot. All undermine and homage twisted circumspectly together to mock whoever was looking. Although Farah was looking, and she didn’t feel mocked. Or at least, only a little bit.

Walking behind Rosalind was a little bit like tilting her face up into the Dragon wind as a child. There was something of that feeling around Rosalind. _Which made sense_ , Farah told herself, _as she’s the last remaining princess of Domino._ Rosalind didn’t seem very princessy. Although Farah supposed that there wasn’t exactly a single template that all princesses had to mould themselves into. Not that Queen Luna seemed to be particularly aware of that. It was almost uncanny how precisely she resembled her mother, the late Queen Astra. 

Farah walked past silvery, witchlight braziers that adorned the passageway walls, and tried not to think about how she was sure that it would be Queen Luna walking behind Rosalind in her place as apprentice, rather than her, if Queen Astra hadn’t fallen. No quantity of Zanbaq could cure you unless the Burned One who injured you was destroyed in time. The Burned Ones seemed to have learned this, and had taken to hunting in savage, fast moving groups. And as dextrous Queen Astra was in light magic, it could do nothing to mute their sense of smell.

Before Queen Astra died, Farah and Luna had had an academic rivalry going on. Light magic was not too dissimilar from mind magic in how it could play with a person’s perceptions, and Farah had to give it to her, Luna was particularly gifted at creating seamless, tailored hallucinations. Disturbing hallucinations. And Rosalind had seemed particularly interested in her talents.

To Farah, at least, that kind of magic always seemed a bit _superficial_. 

It was the emotions one had to watch out for. Especially with Fairies. _The stronger the emotions, the stronger the magic_ was a phrase often bandied about at Alfea - usually by the younger students who liked to lay it on thick, like suffering artists. Perhaps it was that clear cut for other Fairies, but for Mind Fairies… it got complicated.

 _It gets complicated_ , Farah said to herself emphatically, and then was startled to find herself almost bump up against Rosalind’s back, before catching herself and stepping lightly back. 

They had arrived in a passageway that lead to a side entrance of the assembly hall. Rosalind turned and met Farah’s gaze. They were almost of a height, Farah recognised, surprised. Rosalind’s hair was tied back with a simple grey ribbon, and the corners of her eyes were gently creased as she looked down at Farah.

‘Very collected, Farah,’ she murmured approvingly, although there was a glint of something knowing in her eyes. ‘How are you feeling?’

Farah scanned herself. It was important for a Mind Fairy to be able to precisely discern and articulate their feelings. While Specialists and the more elemental Fairies had their training grounds and plinths to practice their skills, a Mind Fairy’s first and most important training ground was…. herself. Just as Specialists studied terrain, and learned how to fight according to different environments and surroundings, Mind Fairies studied emotions, and how to work with them as variegated terrains of the mind.

‘Calm’, said Farah. She looked down for a beat, before meeting Rosalind’s eyes. ‘I am confident that I will do my best for you, professor. I have worked hard. This is what I want. I have nothing to lose.’

She paused, and scanned herself again. Her heart was suddenly beating very fast. Rosalind’s grey, cool gaze seemed to see right through her. Which it undoubtedly could, but Farah could see or feel no evidence of it right now. She was alert to the possibility. Anything could be a test, with Rosalind, but Farah also trusted her. 

‘I am nervous,’ Farah confessed, and took a deep breath. ‘I understand the significance of this - the apprenticeship. I understand that I will be sacrificing much of who I think I am, with you as my teacher. There is so much that I can’t even begin to understand yet, with mind magic, but I know that I will learn so much from you. And that it will be grounded in working for the protection and wellbeing of the realms. This is all that I want.’

Farah winced internally. She could be gruesomely earnest sometimes, and a small part of her mind always watched it happen with a cool disdain. 

However, Rosalind smiled slowly in response, with a faint kind of luminous, silvery delight. ‘Well then,’ she said laconically. ‘Let’s join the party!’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and the kudos guys! I read them and I love them. I'm writing this for myself, to bring a bit of brightness into a strict lockdown and stalled life, but I am delighted to hear that you're enjoying it too. I'm writing a bit each day, and updating every day or few days all going well. Obviously sometimes all doesn't go well, 'cause pandemic, but I'll try. Stay safe. x


	3. Apprentice

Bright lights, laughter, and a warm, bubbling hubbub of chatter and clinking glasses were Farah’s immediate impressions of the assembly hall. It was thronged with students and the gleam of magic. The hall never failed to astound Farah with its vitality and brightness and thrum of energy, whereas beyond the Barrier – well things went to shit, essentially.

In each corner of the large, vaulted hall was an exquisite display of magic. There was a corner for each element – fire, earth, water, and air. Hovering close to the ceiling were vast, insubstantial chandeliers of light, and they moved hypnotically and elegantly, rotating in and around themselves like complicated, living mandalas.

Farah caught sight of Ben hovering near the earth magic display. _Bore_ , she thought fondly. No doubt he’d had a hand in creating it. He was wearing a short brown robe over his clothes – he’d been an apprentice for a year already, and excelled at cultivating the plants that went into making Zanbaq. 

He clearly didn’t give much of a toss about mingling. Even from the opposite side of the hall – the side door had opened up somewhere in between fire and air – Farah could see that his hair was tufted up chaotically at the back… and was that soil he’d tracked in around his boots? 

She could see him peering through his wire rimmed spectacles at some prismatic knot in the bark of the kaleidoscopic tree that seemed to emerge from both floor and wall, reaching up expansively towards the ceiling, then cascading towards the ground with branches that swept to touch the flagstones.

Little insubstantial lights moved decoratively around the twigs and leaves, and there were ribbons of all colours affixed to different branches. 

Or rather they were leaves, she realised, and she watched Ben reach his finger to one and stroke it and even from this distance away she could see the branches shiver in response.

He was a wonderful, gentle friend, with a directness and pragmatism that Farah respected. She wondered if she’d ever wear the blue robe as comfortably and naturally as Ben took to the brown. 

She watched a small, giggling group of Fire Fairies take turns at toasting their fingertips in an elaborate fountain of fire that blew white hot trickles of flame over tiers of dark stone.

In the hall, here was no need for a display of mind magic. Everyone knew that Alfea depended on Mind Fairies to generate and maintain the Barrier.

The Barrier was a similar magic to that which Farah kept tickling over her skin, invisible, except for perhaps a very slight disturbance similar to a faint heat haze. It muted the incoherent feedback that she’d otherwise receive from people’s emotions; traces of thoughts; even everyday sounds and lights could prove overwhelming without that reassuring, ticklish shield. And it muted what she projected out to others too.

It was to the Barrier what a stained glass window was to thousands of layers of reinforced, bulletproof glass.

There were students everywhere, gathered into little groups, laughing amongst old friends, and making those awkward, first conversations with new classmates, and Farah was suddenly very self-conscious about the blue robe that marked her, for the first time, as separate from the general student body. 

It would not be so easy to mingle, for her. 

Fortunately, she did not yet have to. She was keenly aware of Rosalind standing a couple of feet away.

The beginning of term party was in full swing, and they’d judiciously arrived well after the usual speeches welcoming the first years, the returning students.

The announcement of new apprentices and faculty always occurred later on into the welcoming event at Alfea. This allowed time for the new students to get their bearings, break the ice, and pay as little or as much attention as they pleased to the formalities.

This both relieved and slightly annoyed Farah.

-

‘Attention students of Alfea!’ Headmaster Mavil stood at a slight, wooden lectern at the forefront of the hall. It wasn’t ostentatious in any way; _it was contrived rather_ , Farah thought, _to diminish the sense of a divide between students and professors_. 

It said: _we’re all in this together._

As soon as someone became a student of Alfea, they were expected, in a way, to assume the responsibilities and maturity of an adult. 

Especially as students of Alfea living in what was essentially wartime – although a war with forces that no one as of yet had managed to understand the origins and meaning of – they were expected to learn quickly and put their lives on the line sometimes before they could be considered sufficiently ready.

Farah had seen the consequences of students going into battle before they could be considered sufficiently ready.

The students gradually quietened, and turned as one expectantly and more or less attentively towards Headmaster Mavil.

Although First World fashions had become more and more prevalent in the Fairy realms since mortals had learned to be more practical and less whalebone corset about things, students at Alfea had a dress code that drew on the basic mobility of Specialist-wear.

There was no uniform, as such, at Alfea, but students had to be prepared to run and fight at all times. There were small little fashion statements amongst the different types of Fairies – it might be a small ruby pin in the lapel of a supple jacket for a Fire Fairy, or blue socks for a Water Fairy, or a bracelet made of threaded, magicked roots for an Earth Fairy. 

Everyone had their tender tokens of identity.

Mavil smiled at the gathered students. ‘Some small announcements.’

Farah’s heart thudded. Although this was just a formality – she’d been sitting on her acceptance of the apprenticeship for the last three months after all – she’d somehow failed to imagine how irrefutably _real_ it would feel, being acknowledged as Rosalind’s apprentice in front of all the school and luminaries from different realms.

Farah felt _alive._ But also potentially a massive fraud. These were unprecedented times, with unprecedented pressures on apprentices to rapidly meet the expectations of their professors as the mortality rate increased. 

Not just the mortality rate of Fairies and Specialists per se, or that of the regular magical folk who populated the various domains. But the mortality rate of magic, of knowledge, of languages, skills, and history – that died with them.

The onus was on apprentices to keep these things alive; to absorb all that they could from their masters and mistresses. And the biggest onus was on the Alfean apprentices to keep these things alive. They were the best of the best, and their studies explored, cultivated, and protected the deeper magics. 

-

‘I am pleased to declare that we have awarded three Apprenticeships this year to those students of Alfea who showed particular promise in their respective categories.’ 

Headmaster Mavil’s voice resounded around the hall. Even the giggling Fire Fairies quietened down, although there was a gentle hum of interested murmurs and the rustle of teenagers craning their necks and shuffling to get a better look. 

An Alfean Apprenticeship was a high honour, and students were correspondingly nosy about who got the nod – although, of course, rumours had already been flying around. Some turned their heads to look at Farah – standing conspicuously in her blue robe – and some were looking to the back of the hall and whispering excitedly to their friends. 

Mavil continued sombrely. ‘These last years have been years of unparalleled loss in recent memory. The memories and lives of Folk are long, but in recent times, many lives have been brutally cut short. Through scholarship, we at Alfea strive to ensure that our memories do not go the same way. And with our diligence in training we strive to protect all those in danger from the Burned Ones and the forces that sustain them.’

Farah watched as his gaze seemed to rest on Rosalind for a moment. ‘Of course, this includes protecting each other.’

Just as the lectern that Mavil leaned against was slight and wooden, _so too_ , thought Farah absently, _was he_. 

In comparison with Rosalind who somehow stood both insouciantly and implacably, watching Mavil with the slightest of sneers.

Vaguely, Farah wondered why that was , but her entire being was focused on listening to Mavil’s next words. She suddenly caught Ben’s eye from across the room. He looked… startled, Farah noticed, bemused. He knew that she was about to be declared Rosalind’s apprentice, so why the deer in witchlights?

She concentrated on Mavil again. 

‘Out of the Specialists, none came more consistently recommended by his tutors and his peers than Andreas of Eraklyon. Andreas will be apprenticed under Head Specialist Coda. Andreas, please come up.’

Farah watched the grinning, broad shouldered Specialist gently boulder his way through the crowd and up to a space beside the lectern. Mavil sent him a warm, beaming look and clasped his shoulder, murmuring something inaudible to him from where Farah stood. 

Her heart was racing.

Mavil looked directly at her from across the hall, warmly and frankly, and Farah felt momentarily absurd for comparing him to his lectern. Part of her wanted to laugh, but she summoned all her assuredness as former prefect and met his gaze candidly.

‘Out of the Fairies, particularly commended for the brilliance of her final year project in mind magic, and for her integrity and strength of character, Farah of Eraklyon and – Domino.’

There was a slight trip of hesitation in Mavil’s voice as he mentioned Domino, but Farah didn’t mind in the least as at last her feet were carrying her up to the lectern, and then she was clasping Mavil’s hand and he was smiling down at her, but with a faint crease of concern between his eyebrows, and Farah wondered at that, but she was so very happy and beamed radiantly back as he said – 

‘Farah will be apprenticing under Deputy Headmistress Rosalind.’

Farah moved to stand next to Andreas, and he shot her a conspiratorial, merry smile. 

‘Nice robe,’ he mouthed.

Farah grinned back, but then her gaze was pulled back to searching the crowd, combing through the faces to look for Rosalind, seeing Ben briefly, but he seemed to be preoccupied by something towards the back of the hall – many people seemed to be in fact – but Farah kept looking until she found Rosalind’s face, and smiled at her, somehow both confident and shy, and Rosalind was looking at her too, oddly wry and expectant – 

-

And Mavil called out, with a note of something perturbed in his voice, but nevertheless still buoyant and welcoming.

‘Of the Fairies, also commended for her final year project on the intersection between mind and light magic, and in acknowledgement of her recently inherited position as Queen of Solaria –’

Farah’s mind blanked. _Wait, what?_

Mavil continued as the rising hum of interest and rustle of heads turning caused him to slightly raise his voice – 

‘– we welcome Queen Luna as apprentice under Deputy Headmistress Rosalind’

_Wait, WHAT?_

Farah at last looked towards the back of the hall, and saw the gleam of pale blue robe and shining chestnut hair as Queen Luna made her way slowly towards the lectern.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am writing this with no plan and spontaneously seeing what emerges from my shippy lil brain. LUNA. She had to turn up really; she's such a wonderful menace.
> 
> I hope it's not too clunky - this is my first fic not including really dubious ones from when I was about 14, and it's light relief, and it's fun. x


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